sometimes scientifically
puts everyone
and everything
into its trite
and stultifying cage
while the grown mind
belonging to the kind
of man who ducks his head
when the moon is low
(call him fool
or call him sage)
keeps dropping keys
through the age
of night
for beautiful
brawling prisoners.
________________
read more by Hafiz >
4 comments:
please find this poet of Hafez.
It happens all the time in heaven and some day, it will begin to happen again on earth that men and women who are married, and men and men who are lovers, and women and women who give each other light, often will get down on their knees, and while so tenderly holding their lover's hand, with tears in their eyes, will sincerely speak, saying
My dear how can i be more loving to you:
How can i be more kind.
would you please explain to me what this poem means?
By the way i am persian
I need to know
sincerely
sheri
Dear Sheri,
I cannot really say what this poem means because I don't know the original and from long experience I mistrust translations. This particular poem by the Sufi master has been hi-jacked by Westerners because it seems to approve of what Westerners call 'homosexuality'
You will see on the above gloss I have made on another poem by Hafiz that I deplore the obsessive-destructive categorisation which Western people compulsively do : putting everything into little boxes, little prisons, big prisons...
To reduce sensuality to sexuality, and sexuality to homo- and hetero- is mullah-behaviour, Western behaviour.
Apart from that, the Sufi concept of love is asexual, and indeed metaphorical. It might better be translated as 'loving-kindness' (Latin: caritas). Similarly, 'wine' in Sufi poetry (e.g. Omar Khayyám) is not what they drink in the Northern Mediterranean, but the state of understanding and consciousness that both Europeans and mullahs so need to acquire. We are, as Omar Khayyám said, the vessels (amphoræ) for the wine, and fashioned by the Great Potter, whom some call 'Allah, and others might call Evolution.
'Heaven' is not the banal place of Christianity and Islam, full of ghosts and willing virgins and no dogs, but the world of moral imagination.
Hafiz in the poem you quote is simply saying that we should appreciate those who like and love us, and we should make some effort to increase their joy in life and in us. The best way to do this is by being kindly honest and transparent - something that people very rarely are with each other.
Does this help to answer your question ?
See also my versions of Rumi : www.beyond-the-pale.co.uk/rumi
A KIND OF SUFI.
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As an Iranian Persian speaking art historian, I have to say I both agree and disagree with you. The poem "it will happen in heaven" is definitely not Hafez's. You are right. It is a sentimental shallow western interpretation of multifaceted complex and open to interpretation of Hafez.
However, your ideas about Hafez are also not true. Sometimes, in both Hafez and Khayyam, wine is literally wine. "two years old wine and fourteen years old lover", "Saqi there is the shadow of the clouds, there is spring, and there is the stream-side/ I won't tell you what to do, if you are of passion, do what you have to do!" (ساقیا سایهی ابر است و بهار و لب جوی، من نگویم چه کن ار اهل دلی خود تو بگوی!), and many other examples (which are much more difficult to translate for me now). Also, the beloved one in Hafez's poems, like many other Persian classical poets, is in many cases definitely a humane figure, not God or any other mystical being you westerners like to have. In some cases in Sufi tradition, these two become one, as in some Sufi cults, humane beauty was a personifiction and representation of God. Further, again like many other Persian/Iranian classic poets, the beloved ones in Hafez's poems are boys/young males: "If that sweet boy sheds my blood/ O'heart! Make it halal to him, like mother's milk" (گر آن شیرینپسر خونم بریزد، دلا چون شیر مادر کن حلالش), or "O' you cheri boy! What so religious?/ My blood is more halal than mother's blood!" (ای نازنین پسر، تو چه مذهب گرفتهای؟), and many other examples. Hafez was sometimes political, critical, earthly, humouros, mystical, and in most cases, his poems are a mixture of all these together.
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